I just bought a Ubiquiti NanoStation. It has a 80 degree sector antenna built into it. It is a newer model than the much loved Ubiquiti Bullett which had to have an antenna screwed onto it (bought separately). They claim a range of 12 to 15 miles (line of sight) for the NanoStation. It also has an external antenna connector if you want to put up a different antenna.

I was using an Alfa 500Mw USB with a sector panel antenna and it was good but the Ubiquiti has many advantages. It is waterproof and has a built in pole mount so can stay out in the weather, the Alfa couldn't. It uses ethernet, not USB so there are none of the distance limitations that USB has so long runs of cable up a mast for instance are no problem. You can get outdoor grade ethernet cable that is rated for high moisture and direct burial underground. The Ubiquiti can connect to the computer or a wireless router which is something the Alfa can't do. It can be configured to do almost anything you want with a wireless bridge device.

Price wise it's less than the Alfa and its antenna. It is not a non-techie thing though, it is a swiss army knife of wireless networking and there's loads of tech speak involved in setting it up. All this network stuff, the Ubiquiti and a wireless router, uses 12 volts, the Ubiquiti uses Power over Ethernet (anything between 12 and 28 volts DC) and the router runs native at 12 volts DC. Both together draw less than an amp so pretty economical of juice. It was less than a hundred bucks including tax and shipping.

Bud.

Couple questions about the Ubiquiti NanoStation, and wifi access in general. I'm a retired (as in laid off) IT pro, but networking isn't my expertise, though I'm aware of the concepts (I was a database administrator/system programmer on mainframes and unix systems).

I took a brief look at the system on their website. Would this system work at anchor? If the antenna is highly directional at 80 degrees, I'd be concerned of losing connection as the boat tacks back and forth on the hook. I believe our marina gets their internet access via wireless technology of some sort (rural Chesapeake eastern shore); he has a square antenna on the marina office, facing south pointed more or less to a tall radio tower some miles away. I'm not sure if that's a WiFi that I could tap into or not (and he has no idea, just paid to have it set up). The marina in the next cove has a pay to use WiFi set up, which I can just barely connect to with my laptop wireless from about 200 yards away. I'm sure this unit would work in that cove as the distance is short. That's also assuming I can get a VPN pass through, which I believe their wireless supports.

My wife is a DBA and has a 6AM Sunday maintenance window, which often keeps her from coming to the boat. So looking for a solution. I like to keep up with email, etc., especially when I'm away by myself.

Any additional general information on marine WiFi would be appreciated, or a link to where I can find out more. Thanks in advance.

I installed the Ubiquiti Bullet M2 powered wifi antenna on my C375 last year and get good range but I have not tested it at 5 miles. The whole kit with antenna, POE and Ethernet cable was only about $150. See it at netgate.com.

The Bullet is basically a powered amplified wifi system using an Ethernet cable which means little antenna loss when installed on the mast. I installed mine on the backstay and get good reception. While cruising near Coconut Grove in Miami I managed to get quite a few wifi connections although many were encrypted and needed a password.

Rod Tennyson
Lila Jean C375

[quote=plaineolde;8212]Bud.

Couple questions about the Ubiquiti NanoStation, and wifi access in general. I'm a retired (as in laid off) IT pro, but networking isn't my expertise, though I'm aware of the concepts (I was a database administrator/system programmer on mainframes and unix systems).

I took a brief look at the system on their website. Would this system work at anchor? If the antenna is highly directional at 80 degrees, I'd be concerned of losing connection as the boat tacks back and forth on the hook. I believe our marina gets their internet access via wireless technology of some sort (rural Chesapeake eastern shore); he has a square antenna on the marina office, facing south pointed more or less to a tall radio tower some miles away. I'm not sure if that's a WiFi that I could tap into or not (and he has no idea, just paid to have it set up). The marina in the next cove has a pay to use WiFi set up, which I can just barely connect to with my laptop wireless from about 200 yards away. I'm sure this unit would work in that cove as the distance is short. That's also assuming I can get a VPN pass through, which I believe their wireless supports.

My wife is a DBA and has a 6AM Sunday maintenance window, which often keeps her from coming to the boat. So looking for a solution. I like to keep up with email, etc., especially when I'm away by myself.

Any additional general information on marine WiFi would be appreciated, or a link to where I can find out more. Thanks in advance.[/quote]

Gary, my older Alfa USB setup has an 80 degree sector panel antenna and if the boat swings a lot at anchor and you're close to the signal (like within 200 yards) you might lose it but the further out you are from it the less that's a problem. With the Alfa setup I was able to get a marina signal from across the bay, a good two miles, and I was getting a very strong signal. I don't know what the dB was but it was 4 bars on the indicator out of 5. That was with the antenna sitting on the deck behind the dodger so no height advantage at all. At that distance swinging on the anchor wasn't a problem.

The external WiFi antenna I had before the Alfa was a cantenna, it was super directional, probably 30 degrees, swing was a big problem with it but it could haul in a decent signal up to 2 miles even though it was a low powered adapter (50Mw). But not as good as the 400Mw Alfa with the sector antenna.

For the longer hauls, a high gain sector antenna pulls in signals better than an omni-directional antenna, all things being equal, at least that's what my personal experience is. To get really long range (like the 10 or 12 miles Ubiquiti claims) I think you would need a uni-directional antenna like an ultra high gain parabolic mounted very high and of course they have to be aimed perfectly so they're not really practical in most cases on an anchored boat.

The Ubiquiti Bullets usually are screwed into a pole omni-directional antenna and that's a good solution for swinging issues but you are sacrificing some range. But that's almost moot with the Ubiquiti units most of the time. I didn't get a Bullet because for some odd reason none of the dealers up here have any of the high output ones, it almost seems like they're phasing them out.

One thing I like about the Nanostation is that it has the built in 4 array sector antenna that should be good for medium-long distances but if I get into a situation where swinging is a problem I can use the external antenna input to plug in an omni pole antenna. That does not disable the internal one, the Nano will let you select either or both antennas or you can set it to auto and let it decide what to use. That could be the ultimate fix for range vs swing. There is a lot of loss with antenna cable (compared to zero with ethernet) so it needs to be kept as short as possible. The one on my Alfa is about a foot.

The way your marina gets internet via wireless is a different type of system than the WiFi your computer uses. There's a variety of these systems, most around here use the Motorola Canopy system. They can be on 900 Mhz, 5.2, 5.4 or 5.7 Ghz. 2.4 (or occasionally 5.8) is what Wifi uses. Your marina guy needs to run the signal he gets from them into a wireless router and then probably put up an antenna before you could get the signal.

The problem now is that most people are using the internet for high bandwidth stuff, like video, Skype and so forth, and a standard home type internet connection can't carry those loads when a lot of people are using it which is why you read the sailing blogs and people are complaining about how slow their connection is. A lot of places are blocking video now which is understandable on shared infrastructure and I kind of like that. I mostly am doing email and weather so it doesn't bother me if video is blocked.

VPN has to be enabled on the router next door, most don't come that way, they'd have had to turn it on. If it's only 200 yards then any external antenna will get it, that's really low range. Some VPN software can be very high bandwidth so the performance thing could be a problem, though not likely at 6 am on a Sunday morning.

There's lots of guys selling marine wi-fi stuff, google "marine wifi" and you'll get dozens. They tend to charge a lot more for this stuff than it's worth. But some of them also put a lot of effort into making it easier for non-techie types to use. There's a lot of BS claims being made about distances you can get. They give perfect world range numbers, reality is mostly going to be probably 1/4 to 1/5th of that. A lot depends on the router sending the signal, some of them are junk and some are very powerful with sophisticated antennas, that alone could quintuple the range. I take their claims with a block of salt.

I'm not a networking expert, I'm not an expert in IT anything, I was a generalist IT guy. Did mostly client/server and e-commerce web development but doing that got me into all kinds of other IT fields, networking was one of them. I learned enough to make what I was doing work. I left the corporate world in '05, my choice to take early retirement, and now I mostly deal with home computers and networks which lets me work when I want to and sail as much as I can!